The womb veil was a 19th-century American form of barrier contraception consisting of an occlusive pessary, i.e. a device inserted into the vagina to block access of the sperm into the uterus. Made of rubber, it was a forerunner to the modern diaphragm and cervical cap.Janet Farrell Brodie, Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America (Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 216 online; Andrea Tone, Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America (MacMillan, 2001), p. 14. An illustration of occlusive pessaries of the womb-veil type may be viewed in Vern L. Bullough, Encyclopedia of Birth Control (ABC-Clio, 2003), p. 206 online. The name was first used by Edward Bliss Foote in 1863 for the device he designed and marketed.Robert Jütte, Contraception: A History (Polity Press, 2008, originally published in German 2003), p. 154 online. "Womb veil" became the most common 19th-century American term for similar devices,Brodie, Contraception and Abortion, p. 212. and continued to be used into the early 20th century.
Womb veils were among a "range of contraceptive technology of questionable efficacy" available to American women of the 19th century,Jeffrey D. Nichols, Prostitution, Polygamy and Power: Salt Lake City, 1847–1918 (University of Illinois Press, 2002), p. 69 online. forms of which began to be advertised in the 1830s and 1840s.Brodie, Contraception and Abortion, pp. 190 and 212. They could be bought widely through mail-order catalogues; when induced abortion was criminalized during the 1870s, reliance on birth control increased.Esther Katz, "The History of Birth Control in the United States," in History of Medicine (Routledge, 1988), vol. 4, pp. 89–90 online; Andrea Tone, Controlling Reproduction: An American History p. 215 online. Womb veils were touted as a discreet form of contraception, with one catalogue of erotic products from the 1860s promising that they could be "used by the female without danger of detection by the male."Donna Dennis, Licentious Gotham: Erotic Publishing and Its Prosecution in Nineteenth-Century New York (Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 215–216 online.
The use of rubber pessaries for contraception likely arose from the 19th-century practice of correcting a prolapsed uterus with such a device; the condition seems to have been far more frequently diagnosed than its incidence would warrant, and at times may have been a fiction for employing a pessary for birth control.Angus McLaren, "Birth Control: The Diaphragm," in Eyewitness to Science (Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 175; Katz, "The History of Birth Control in the United States," p. 91. As with the production of condoms for men, the development of vulcanized rubber by Charles Goodyear helped make barrier contraceptives for women more reliable and inexpensive.Patricia Aikens Murphy, Katherine Morgan, and Frances E. Likis, "Contraception," in Women's Gynecologic Health (Jones and Bartlett, 2006), p. 177 online; Larry Lankton, Beyond the Boundaries: Life and Landscape at the Lake Superior Copper Mines, 1840–1875 (Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 160 online; Tone, Devices and Desires, p. 14.
Other terms for the contraceptive diaphragm were "female preventatives", "female protectors", "Victoria's protectors", and the "French pessary" ("F.P.") or pessaire preventif.Brodie, Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America, p. 5. This linguistic variety, some of it euphemistic, makes it difficult to distinguish in the literature among diaphragms, cervical caps, female condoms, and other pessaries; one form of "womb veil" is described in 1890 as "like a ring pessary covered by a membraneous envelope."Brodie, Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America, p. 216. Another source in 1895 describes it as "a small soft rubber cup surrounded at the brim by a flexible rubber ring about an inch or inch and a quarter in diameter."William Pawson Chunn, "The Prevention of Conception. Its Practicability and Justifiability," Hot Spring Medical Journal 4 (1895), p. 83.
Social history The Popular Health Movement of the Jacksonian era encouraged the sharing of knowledge about contraception, and contraceptive devices were advertised openly in newspaper ads and in brochures throughout the first half of the 19th century.Adele Clark, Disciplining Reproduction: Modernity, American Life Sciences, and the Problems of Sex (University of California Press, 1998), p. 167 online. Among their proponents was the physician Edward Bliss Foote. Foote introduced his device, the womb veil, in a self-published book entitled Medical Common Sense:
This consists of an India-rubber contrivance which the female easily adjusts in the vagina before copulation, and which spreads a thin tissue of rubber before the mouth of the womb so as to prevent the seminal aura from entering. … Conception cannot possibly take place when it is used. The full enjoyment of the conjugal embrace can be indulged in during coition. The husband would hardly be likely to know that it was being used, unless told by the wife. … It places conception entirely under the control of the wife, to whom it naturally belongs; for it is for her to say at what time and under what circumstances, she will become the mother, and the moral, religious, and physical instructress of offspring.See also discussion by Brodie, Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America, p. 218.
Foote appears to have been the first to use the term "womb veil", in introducing his vaginal diaphragm in 1863.Lee L. Bean, Geraldine P. Mineau, and Douglas L. Anderton, Fertility Change on the American Frontier: Adaptation and Innovation (University of California Press, 1990), p. 30 online; Vern L. Bullough, Science in the Bedroom: A History of Sex Research (Basic Books, 1994), p. 106 online. The explicitness of his description is regarded as "rather remarkable" for its time.Christopher Hoolihan, An Annotated Catalogue of the Edward C. Atwater Collection of American Popular Medicine and Health Reform (University of Rochester Press, 2001), vol. 1, p. 335 online. Foote touted his device as "the only reliable means yet discovered for the prevention of conception," and sold it "closely sealed" through the mail at a cost of $6. Foote may have gotten the idea for his device from an 1838 German treatise on cervical caps, or from acquaintance with the German tradition of midwifery that had been brought to the United States.Brodie, Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America, p. 218. Although he mentions his intention to obtain a patent, none is recorded.Michael Sappol, A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 369.
"Succinct, straightforward" advertising for birth control devices, as well as for aphrodisiacs and drugs to induce abortion and cure venereal disease, had been common in newspapers of the 1830s and 40s.Brodie, Contraception and Abortion, p. 190. But in 1873, the Comstock laws made it illegal to disseminate information about contraception.Lis Harris, Rules of Engagement: Four Couples and American Marriage Today (Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 106 online. As Brodie, Contraception and Abortion, pp. 191–192, notes, even "eminently respectable" publications were subject to accusations. For an editorial fulmination against advertising various remedies for gonorrhea and impotence, with greater indignation directed at even the possibility of exposure to ads for condoms and womb veils ("this literature of sin, a fertile source of immorality"), see "Death to Quacks," Toledo Medical and Surgical Journal 2 (1878), pp. 415–416 online. The following year, Foote was arrested and convicted under Comstock.John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (University of Chicago Press, 1988, 1997, 2nd ed.), p. 161 online. His pamphlets were seized and destroyed, although his descriptions of the womb veil survive in early editions of his book.Bullough, Science in the Bedroom, p. 106.
In subsequent editions, he was required to cut back the section on contraception to focus on douching, usually referred to in the literature of the time as the use of syringes.As in the 1868 edition of Foote's book, p. 381. See Chesler, Woman of Valor, p. 70 online and Hoolihan, An Annotated Catalogue, pp. 335–337; also Tone, Devices and Desires, p. 62. Retailers were subjected to raids, with womb veils among the contraceptive devices confiscated.Brodie, Contraception and Abortion, p. 235; Tone, Devices and Desires, pp. 29 and 41. In March 1878, Anthony Comstock himself raided a druggist and seized an inventory that included six womb veils; another arrest netted 150. Although contraceptive information in popular media was curtailed, technical and medical journals and textbooks were not subject to this regulation, and physicians continued to discuss both issues and technologies pertaining to birth control.Katz, "The History of Birth Control in the United States," p. 91.
The early 20th century saw a resurgence of interest in birth control in the United States, due largely to the efforts of Margaret Sanger, Fania Mindell and other social activists. One of the most outspoken advocates for contraception during this time was Emma Goldman, who openly defied the Comstock laws by recommending the womb veil in leaflets she distributed after her lectures.Including Why and How the Poor Should Not Have Many Children; see Linda Gordon, The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics in America (University of Illinois Press, 1974, 2002), p. 148 online, and Ellen Chesler, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America (Simon & Schuster, 1992, 2007), p. 88.
Efficacy and side effects The womb veil, described in medical Latin as a type of pessarium occlusivum, was considered by some medical authorities to be effective if fitted and inserted correctly. Post-coital douching was often recommended in conjunction with its use.F.E. Chandler, review of Die Mittel zur Verhuetung der Conception by Jans Ferdy (Heuser, n.d.), in The Medical Times and Register 32 (1896), p. 258 online. Prolonged use of the device was reported on occasion to produce side effects, some of which pointed toward a need for better hygiene."Simple erosions, such as arise from the mechanical irritation of a pessary, or from the pent-up secretions incident to the wearing of a womb-veil, are quickly cured by removing the cause and keeping the parts clean": David Tod Gilliam, A Text-book of Practical Gynecology (1916, 5th ed.), p. 237 online. Similar report of "gastric disturbance" that was relieved by removal of the womb veil, releasing "an accumulation of a creamy fluid," verbal reports given 8 February 1887 as published in The American Lancet 11 (1887), p. 177 online. Serious ulcerations were reported among those who wore it too long or without proper care.Kansas Medical Journal, 23 January 1897, p. 47 online. In a report to the New Haven Medical Association, one doctor blamed the womb veil for a woman's nocturnal seizures.Medical society reports, Yale Medical Journal 7 (1900–1901), pp. 329–330 online.
A gynecologist noted that the rubber womb veil might cause irritation or itching, but reckoned that the "opportunity for increased or unlimited intercourse" was the proximate cause.William A. Graham, "Etiology of Gynecological Disease," Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of North Carolina (1902), p. 235 online. Another physician who promoted contraception as a way to avoid resorting to abortion found that some users had been disappointed in the womb veil; he recommended douching as a more effective means.O.E. Herrick, "Abortion and Its Lessons," Michigan Medical News 5 (1882), p. 10 online.